While keeping the plight of the aspirant in view in learning our Karnataka music, I sincerely feel that the aspect of acquiring Manodharma-sangita is the most crucial one from which, in general, all the music-teachers, over the globe, very conveniently escape throwing this responsibility upon the head of the aspirant himself/herself. Again, in the process of getting proper acquaintance with Manodharma-sangita writing accurate notation with all the details of its oscillations is essential and to do so perfectly symbolization of all the oscillations is much needed which has never been done to bring it much nearer to the common man.

Than the olden days, nowadays it has become easier to record and preserve the music by means of the easily accessible electronic-gadgets. Even then, in writing the effective notation, to deal with all the different oscillations of our music becomes a bottle-neck. Most unfortunately, since many centuries, either categorization or codification or symbolization of all the oscillations of our music has never been taken up to make it accessible to the common man. After my retirement, only by the grace of the Almighty, I was able to make extensive research in this direction and bring out 60 kinds of symbols among which Kaishiki-nishada alone has 27 facets. I have already furnished all of them along with the respective audio-files in my CD, AMS Easy Methods-2007, which is downloadable from http://www.sangeethamshare.org/chandra/ ... hods-2007/ for the benefit of the aspirants, teachers and interested people.

In any aspect, healthy, logic, and rational discussions with knowledgeable persons help a lot for the well-disciplined development. Since a long time, in this respect, even though I have very eagerly been waiting for such discussions from the knowledgeable persons of this forum nobody came forward till now. Recently one anonymous member ‘vainika’ dared to come out accidentally (refer the sub-thread, ‘incorrect information furnished in respect of 10 Gamakas’ of the main thread, ‘General discussions’) to discuss but vanished. I don’t know why?

Yesterday, one of my friends sent me a xerox-copy of the article, Gamaka-s in writing - A new system of notations for Indian music, written by Mr. Ramesh Vinayakam published in ‘Sruti - May, 2011’. I have gone through it and again became hopeful in holding some discussions not only with the author of this article but also with some knowledgeable persons of this forum in finding a way out for this problem for the benefit of our aspirants. All this is very strictly for the benefit of the aspirants and teachers only but not at all to make any longer claims of personal achievements.

While participating in such discussions, nowadays, all the participants can very conveniently avoid any kind of expenditure or time or energy to travel to any other place and by holding them through the handy ‘Skype’. My ID is ‘msakella2002’ both on Skype and Yahoo Messenger (mostly I prefer Skype only) and phone numbers are 040-27054232, 27051110 & 9908822992. In general, I always keep myself ’invisible’ from being pestered by each and everybody and if any interested person informs me by typing his availability online I shall come online and speak if I am online to respond (of course, I don’t prefer to chat). Interested persons can go through the details of this article and my CD and come online to discuss.

Giving high importance to this crucial topic I request the moderators to make this thread ‘Sticky’ if possible for the benefit of the aspirants and teachers. amsharma

I have struggled with reading notation for gamaka-s. Subbarama Dikshitar's Sangita Sampradaya Pradarsini made an attempt at using symbols for various gamaka and Sri Akella has also gone to much pains to notate gamakam (I have been through the AMS Easy Methods PDF file 1 pages 25-31).

Perhaps if I had learnt the gamaka notation from a young age it would have been easy to read but trying it now is like learning a totally new foreign language script. I am used to just the standard notation with out gamaka symbols and revert to my limited knowledge of the raga to apply the gamaka as per the phrase it occurs in.

Dear brother-member, mohan, What you wrote is absolutely correct in respect of the Gamaka symbols furnished by Subbarama Dikshitar in his Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini. Me too felt difficulty in following them.

But, even though it is not that easy to learn such symbols at an old age after 30 or 40 years, it is not that difficult to follow them as most of the symbols follow the sound-travel of the note. It is far easier to explain you these symbols by ‘Skype’ than writing longer sentences. Why don’t you give a trial to speak to me on “Skype’? In general, I remain online between 7 & 8 am or pm (IST) everyday possibly unless I have some urgent work to go out or my computer is hospitalised or the power here is off. You are welcome to speak to me. In fact, elders can understand well than kids while kids may not be able to understand like elders but can work well than elders. So, if the elders understand the things well they can make the kids of their locality understand well. In this process we can serve our society efficiently if we can patiently work a little bit more than usual in which way I am presently doing at this old age of 73 years remaining at my home. Why don’t you consider this to serve our kids? amsharma

Dear sir, I am unable to view the link provided. After logging to sangeethamshare.org, when I click on the file, it again goes back to login screen. Could you let me know if I'm doing anything wrong? Or, if the content has moved, could you let me know where to find it now?

@bhaskarns
The audio files are also from the CDs - the dropbox link is also from Akellaji. The pdf files contain reference numbers (e.g, 395-01, etc.) - and those can be looked up in the audio samples.

Please note that there are a few inconsistencies when it comes to the gamaka audio samples, as compared to what is listed in the pdfs. Here are the ones we found so far:
414 in place of 413.
415 in place of 414.
452 in place of 450.
454 in place of 451.
442 missing
450 missing.

Unlike any other music-teacher my research in this respect is un-ending and I have been used to modify the material when it is needed for the benefit of the aspirant and their parents (not for the benefit of the so-called music-teachers (cheaters). Thus, now I have again modified accordingly. amsharma